r or food or anything. The cause is want of
employment. There is no work. Many cases, of course, go down through
drink, but the most cannot get work. The fact is that there are more
men than there is work for them to do, and this I may say is a regular
thing, winter and summer.'

A sad statement surely, and one that excites thought.

I asked what became of this residue who could not find work. His
answer was, 'They wander about, die off, and so on.'

A still sadder statement, I think.

The Major in charge is a man of great organising ability, force of
character, and abounding human sympathy. Yet he was once one of the
melancholy army of wasters. Some seventeen years ago he came into the
Army through one of its Shelters, a drunken, out-of-place
cabinet-maker, who had been tramping the streets. They gave him work
and he 'got converted.' Now he is the head of the Manchester Social
Institutions, engaged in finding work for or converting thousands of
others.

At first the Army had only one establishment in Manchester, which used
to be a cotton mill. Now it is a Shelter for 200 men. Then it took
others, some of which are owned and some hired, among them a great
'Elevator' on the London plan, where waste paper is sorted and sold.
The turn-over here was over L8,000 in 1909, and may rise to L12,000. I
forget how many men it finds work for, but every week some twenty-five
new hands come in, and about the same number pass out.

This is a wonderful place, filled with what appears to be rubbish, but
which is really valuable material. Among this rubbish all sorts of
strange things are to be found. Thus I picked out of it, and kept as a
souvenir, a beautifully-bound copy of Wesley's Hymns, published about
a hundred years ago. Lying near it was an early edition of Scott's
'Marmion.' This Elevator more than pays its way; indeed the Army is
saving money out of it, which is put by to purchase other buildings.

Then there are houses where the people employed in the paper-works
lodge, a recently-acquired home for the better class of men, which was
once a mansion of the De Clifford family, and afterwards a hospital,
and a store where every kind of oddment is sold by Dutch auction.
These articles are given to the Army, and among the week's collection
I saw clocks, furniture, bicycles, a parrot cage, and a crutch. Not
long ago the managers of this store had a goat presented to them,
which nearly ate them out of house and home, as no on